


Stand in the Ashes

by AverageAgent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Andronikos/inquisitor is mentioned, F/M, Gift Fic, Infidelity mentioned, Minor spoilers for Shadow of Revan, Ziost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 02:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13284768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AverageAgent/pseuds/AverageAgent
Summary: Ziost is gone. They remain.





	Stand in the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> This is...the first fic I've written in a solid couple years? Anyway. 
> 
> Arillin is my friend's main girl and she's been telling me for like. Ever that she wanted to read a scene with her Inquisitor and theron on ziost after That Whole Mess 
> 
> So this is her birthday present which she has permitted me to upload ;* hap birth my dude

Theron finds her in the ashes of Ziost. 

Her fingers drag through the grey dust that is all that remains of life on the planet. Her face is twisted in a small petulant frown that makes him think of a child who can’t find the solution to a puzzle box and is nearly considering just breaking the damn thing open to find something of value within. Her eyes are flat, however, watching with an unfocused gaze as her fingertips trace patterns around the place where she kneels on the ground. 

“Of all the war I have waged,” Arillin muses aloud, breaking the silence easily. He doesn’t bother to ask how she knew he had arrived in spite the soft ashes muffling the sound of his approach. “This must be the greatest death toll I have yet left.” 

He doesn’t reply. He not be the great Jedi his mother had hoped he could become, but he doesn’t need the Force to sense that any attempt to deny her guilt would do more harm than good. 

“Tell me,” She continues regardless, the curved montrals on her head angling up as she raises her gaze to the vast, empty horizon where smoke and ash obscures the sky. “Is this my reward for trying to preserve life? Trying to prevent destruction? Is the light so blinding as to-!” She cuts herself off and gestures to the wasteland surrounding them with grey-dusted hands. 

And still, he remains silent.

After a moment she turns, just enough for one eye, reddened with tears he knows she hasn’t allowed herself to shed, to peer at him with resigned suspicion past the thick lekku that spill over her shoulder. He holds her gaze, watching her in turn as she slowly rises, ignoring the ashes that cling to her uncovered knees. The pale blue of her skin is patchworked with grey, markedly darker by several shades than the white markings that wrap around and over her face and head, more damning than if she had instead been stained in all the blood she’d ever spilled. He remembers meeting her for the first time, feeling her overwhelming power rolling off her slight form in waves. Not through the Force, but through the proud set of her shoulders and the angles of her face. Her eyes had burned a bright, fierce topaz with both a carefully bridled Sith malevolence that he hadn’t understood and with a hunger that he had. 

Now, in this wasteland only populated by the ghosts of the million lives snuffed out in a moment, those golden eyes are muted, nearly lost among the grey that surrounds them. The abject horror at the loss of this world has shuttered part of that vicious pride away someplace where he cannot see it. 

“Why are you here, Theron?” She finally asks, her Imperial accented voice ringing flat and hollow, as if it isn’t really a question at all, but simply an observation of yet another thing she can’t bring herself to comprehend. 

He shrugs, finding that he doesn’t really know the reason himself. Only that Lana had told him that Arillin had returned to the surface, and he’d followed her back down without hesitation. So he shrugs, and the lie trips off his tongue as easy as breathing. “You’ve been gone a while, all radio silence. Some of your crew was getting concerned.” 

For the briefest moment, he sees that spark of anger return and flash in her eyes. She knows he’s lying. But, in an instant, the spark fades. She sighs and turns back to the devastation but does not kneel again. Her arms twitch a bit as if she’s resisting the urge to wrap them around herself. He wants to cross the ashes and go to her, wants to take her into his arms like he had on Yavin 4 when he’d tried to say a final goodbye and instead had taken her to his quarters in the ship he’d arrived on, too absorbed in the feel of her to reason himself out of it. She’d been gone without a word nearly as soon as they’d finished, slipping past the soldiers breaking down the camp in the last minutes of the truce and out of his reach. He feels guilty at the frisson of want that rushes over him for a moment, inappropriate in a place like this. He doubts that here she would let him so much as place a hand on her shoulder for some semblance of comfort.

He shouldn’t even be standing here with her now. He should already be lightyears away. Although, if speaking of what should be, the population of an entire planet should not have been wiped out in one fatal sweep, so he figures he can allow himself this infraction. Arillin briefly flicks that flat yellow gaze back to him for a moment, as if making sure he’s still there. Foolishly, he considers just taking her somewhere hidden and far away, where the dead weight of a literal world doesn’t hang off her narrow shoulders. It’s a ridiculous urge, juvenile and unrealistic and so appealing that his bones ache with it. 

“Revel is probably wondering where you are.” He says, more to remind himself than her that she has a husband, one who would miss her should she disappear. He looks at the curve of her shoulders and thinks about the shape of her in his dim quarters on Yavin 4. 

She scoffs, and he blinks, surprised. “Andronikus will not be concerned.” She sounds so sure of it, so easily dismissive of the idea, that it makes him uncomfortable. She sighs again. “But Ashara may be. She’s too soft.” 

Arillin stands still and silent again for a moment. He feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise and he’s unsure of the reason until she thrusts one hand out to her side, gathering the electricity she’d built in the air onto her still ashen fingers. By the time he realizes what’s happening it’s already over, lightning bursting from her outstretched hand into the ashes in one powerful bolt. He doesn’t even have time to startle. She leans over and plucks a small circle of glass from the ground where the lightning had struck it, and he’s sure it must burn her hand as she turns it back and forth, examining the swirl of ash in the otherwise perfect piece. 

She turns to him fully, closing her first around the glass. Her eyes shine again with a renewed, hard light. The fire he’d seen during that first meeting forged into hard steel, but burning just as bright. He doesn’t know what conclusion she has come to here in the ashes, and he doesn’t ask. She strides past him in the direction of the shuttle pad, close enough that he can nearly feel the warmth of her, can nearly smell the last vestiges of ozone and lightning in her wake. 

He follows.


End file.
